The Infinite Fractal Universe
Robert L. Oldershaw · 2005
With regard to cosmology, we live at a very privileged time. When we read about exciting and revolutionary paradigm changes, in which our most fundamental ideas about nature undergo radical revisions, the drama usually has taken place well before we were born. Today, however, we have the rare opportunity of witnessing at first hand a profound transformation in our understanding of how the Universe is structured. This ongoing change of cosmological paradigms from a “small ” finite cosmos to an infinite fractal cosmos began about two decades ago and is in full swing at present. The short version of what is happening goes like this. For about 50 years the Big Bang model of the Universe has provided an excellent explanation for the basic cosmological observations: a very large-scale expansion, an approximately uniform background of microwave radiation and a unique set of abundances for the atomic elements. However, there were some technical problems with this model, such as an acausal beginning of spacetime, a lack of magnetic monopoles, an unexpectedly high degree of uniformity, and an enigmatic knife-edge balance between the open and closed states. Then in the early 1980s Alan Guth showed how these and other problems with the